Artwork Page for Blood and Semen V

Details / Information for Blood and Semen V

Series Title: "In a Dream..."

Blood and Semen V

1990

Andres Serrano

(American, 1950-)
publisher

Portfolio II published by Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS

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Culture
America
Medium
silver dye bleach process color print (Cibachrome)
Measurements
Image: 40 x 59.6 cm (15 3/4 x 23 7/16 in.); Paper: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.); Matted: 71.1 x 81.3 cm (28 x 32 in.)
Credit Line
Anonymous Donor and Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS 1995.204.7
Impression
11
Copyright
© Andres Serrano
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print

Description

Serrano came to prominence in the 1980s for artwork that provoked and angered American right-wing legislators, including the late Senator Jesse Helms. Known as the "culture wars," it was a time when Helms and other politicians attacked the National Endowment for the Arts for supporting artwork they deemed obscene and offensive. While Serrano's images may evoke strong reactions, his subject matter remains elementally human, whether he is depicting religious icons, closely cropped human figures, objects of violence, or in the case of this work, bodily fluids. Produced at the height of the AIDS crisis in America, Blood and Semen V is a mixture of blood and semen seen as if under a microscope. Importantly, both fluids carry equally productive and destructive power—each can produce life through transfusions or conception, or hasten death via complications caused by HIV/AIDS. While visually abstract, the image is a poignant commentary on the cycle of life to death and back again.
A horizontally oriented color print features thick swathes of fluid cutting diagonally across the frame. In the top right corner, a pale white space meets a wave-like edge of deep red. The red transitions into translucent orange and yellow tones with fine lines and bubbles creating a mottled texture. A small, white, hook-shaped form sits within the darker liquid as the fluids swirl and intermingle across the surface.

Blood and Semen V

1990

Andres Serrano, Portfolio II published by Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS

(American, 1950-)
America

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